I'll be clear here and say that there are some ways I'm not certain this will be of interest to the casual reader, but I think it will be of interest to those interested in exploring the writing process and the psyche in relation to creative expression, they genuinely go hand in hand as creative expression is effectively the subconscious becoming conscious in order to be known. If this is not your thing, fret not, there will still be more of the more relaxed posts as well, dear reader.

​I'll also note here that there are ways in which I discuss some of this process in a post on my psychologically centered self- exploration blog Scorpion's Labyrinth: A Blog About Being Present for anyone curious about these realizations( I'll also crosspost this there for any readers there who might not know that this blog and it are written by the same person and find it interesting). You can find that post, A Terrible Beauty: The Dissociative Dance of the Healing Creator's Psyche, which is about the connection between dissociation and expression here :

If you like that post there are several others there as well, please feel free to follow me at both blogs. In many ways I think its long overdue that I make it clear these blogs are from the same individual and should be interpreted to be as intersected in their understanding as my own interest in, and connection with, both creative expression and the mind via psychology and sociology. I've kept them separate as a way to allow myself space to explore these differing worlds, but I should long ago have understood that for me these things are as intermingled as the whorls of my own mind. With that I want to be clear there may be far more blended posts like these here as I decompress and own who I am as opposed to dividing myself for polite consumption as I've done in the past.

There are a lot of ways in which I knew and had often discussed the fact that I was working through fears and others elements of the psyche with my writing in the past, but I don't think I truly understood it with any real depth until I finally had that little turn of the key when I was listening to my partner talk about some interesting insights the podcast The Wizard and the Bruiser had in relation to the comic book character Wolverine.

Let me give you a little context for this. Wolverine is a pretty widely known antihero of the superhero group The X-Men, a broken and mysterious man, he represents quite a lot of things for people, many of them based in an understanding of manhood that is contested between being potentially toxic masculinity and protective and directed aggressive behaviour justified by what is seen as a man standing for what is right. He has a healing factor that allows him to quickly recover from any damage to his body, he's even come back from total destruction of his brain, and also has an indestructible adamantium skeleton complete with retractable claws, all of it wielded by a man with an intense personality known for his ferocious anger and willingness to do a great deal of damage to others. As a result Wolverine is an important figure for those who grew up reading comics, particularly men who grew up or were teens in the 90s, for whom he was a major formative figure in their perception of self and what it is to fight for what you believe is right. In fact, I think for some women of the same generation he was likely a formative figure representing what they might encounter in a protective masculine partner regardless of how healthy or unhealthy that is.

The Wizard and the Bruiser is a pop culture podcast that deals with major themes of what they term "nerd culture" , so they'll pick a theme and then discuss their takes on why it's important. If you want to check them out, go here:

https://soundcloud.com/wizbru

On this particular episode a discussion point was brought up to the effect that Wolverine is actually something of a vampire, a being trapped in a cycle of rebirth that leaves them an outsider that is regenerated by a seemingly supernatural power but remains dependent on the rest of humanity to feel whole. Wolverine's vampirism is unique in that it makes him a living embodiment of the fact that those who experience trauma face a complex process by which the mind may not record a memory as it is intended to do and instead stores away a broken memory and/or an incomplete sense memory which dictates the way a person behaves in relation to a similar experience because the typical cognitive function has been rewritten to work from a trauma conscious directive tied into fight, flight, and freezing as a first response to preserve stability at all costs- even the loss of relationships and potential harm to the self. This is deeply discussed by the very insightful and well researched Bessel van der Kolk MD in his book The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma which I highly recommend to anyone interested in the phenomena or who experienced trauma themselves.

Keep in mind I had heard all of this secondhand rather than listening in myself ( I struggle with listening to podcasts because there is no body language to follow as a grounding element of what's going on. It's one of my things, so Todd will often talk me through interesting episodes. ) so some of this discussion is also affected by Todd's own personal insight on their discussion and my own understanding of trauma and trauma psychology which has also informed how he speaks with me about related topics. All of that being said, here is the point of bringing up Wolverine: All of these elements intrigued me enough to think it would certainly make for an interesting take on vampires and other monsters in horror fiction, a way in which psychology could be introduced into the narrative in a very subconscious and nuanced way to make the premise its own animal- except it dawned on me that this is what I had been doing with my own fiction since I had begun to write!

Not only was this the case, I had been doing this so naturally that I didn't even get it until I began to consider these ideas in relation to the character Mateo from my vampire series Broken Shades, on whose personal narrative I had been blocked for years. I had begun to consider how I could write something based on the premise when I realized that Mateo was and had always been my Wolverine, a broken and damaged soul so entangled in his trauma that he can't differentiate it from who he is and so cannot define himself as a complete person either as a separate entity or as a conscious identity.Fundamentally broken, the victim of several incidents of mental, physical, emotional, even what one could consider soul violence, his memories- in effect his mind- and his body exist as nearly separate states, each new recovered form he has over the course of his life more and more detached from the one before, so much so that he has been a new and severed person at each point in his life- a terrible butterfly of pain processed through metamorphosis into a darker and darker version of himself. As we know him in Cool Green Waters he has become a monster who destroys in a physiological response to the nightmarish things he has lived through, a victimizer to Aremia, the vampire whose story begins in the same book, with whom he is locked in a devilish dance that plays on her own trauma- a living embodiment of codependency between an avoidant and anxious attachment pair in relationship.

Soon my mind slipped from Mateo to the villain of Eyes Like Blue Fire and Water Like Crimson Sorrow, Marie Gaston, who abused him in one of those periods and was herself the living embodiment of a narcissist both in her nature and the gifts she wielded like weapons, both to be a monster within and hold dominion over others via her ability to make zombie minions. From there I also thought of Anton, Trudeau, Delamorte, Raven, and Katja who is the central protagonist of the series and herself a figure through which I had always been seeking myself. All of them have certain gifts and self identifying elements that embody some form of mental illness- and then I got it. I hadn't only been talking about my fear and exploring little elements of struggle between people, I had been talking about so much more- my trauma, mental illness, and the cost of all of it had been written down in the shifting forms of my vampires.

Todd and I discussed it briefly as I worked through the process of understanding came out in the fits and starts of discussion I tend to have at such times and I sat with it a bit longer afterward. Between our two perspectives I soon realized I had cleared some blocks in relation to my writing, my connection to psychology, and the trauma I had personally experienced in the past. As the subject came to mind over the course of the last few days I soon began to see that this narrative was not only present in Broken Shades but also many of my other short stories such as Wendy Won't Go and All That Remains which have their own dialogues about trauma, loss, and the destructive nature of relationships which have been marred by trauma.

I had been having a subconscious dialogue with myself and my readers about what it was to be affected by trauma and mental illness. I was unknowingly having a narrative of how it all defined and informed everything we did in a way I did not consciously understand on virtually any level before I finally understood that I suffered from Complex PTSD back in the spring of 2016 and began a solo exploration through healing myself as a result in the ensuing years and months since.

I'm not sure I'm conveying the sheer enormity of that here quite as clearly as I felt it when it finally became that defined in my mind. Allow me to be clear, I knew I was in pain and that it limited me, I knew that well enough that I had been an occasional student of psychology and sociology via books from the likes of Mary Pipher MD and Brenda Rabkin among others. I was informed enough to understand that I likely had anxiety and been through post partum depression after the birth of my son and the loss of our first daughter, but I had not been aware I was talking myself through my trauma on this level all along- even as a teenager when the first two books were originally written and psychology was a vague thing I had only just begun to be aware of at all.

The resulting understanding has allowed me to realize quite a lot about what it is that I have been working to do with my writing and the path I intend to take over the course of the rest of my life on multiple levels. Having a clear understanding that I am not only working to tell a story - essentially my own and that of others- I am working to heal myself and others through written works that seek to seed a depth of understanding that allows healing to occur also allows me to see why it is that I also seek to be engaged with this same process through becoming a trauma counselor. Two potential careers that I struggled for a long while to choose between have become quite clearly the same path all along, allowing me to in effect become whole in my purpose.

Where did the idea for Death Dance in the Woods come from; did it turn out differently than expected? – Death Dance was started so long ago I couldn’t possibly tell you where the idea came from. I started writing it almost three years ago, but due to other projects taking priority or complications in life, I ended up putting it on the back burner a few times. Finally, just a couple of months ago, I decided it was time to write a non-comedy horror story, and committed to finishing it. I think it helped that not long before that I read KILL FOR SATAN! by Bryan Smith, and it really inspired me. It’s probably the most, fun, straight-forward non-pretentious horror book I’ve ever read, which is pretty much exactly what I go for with writing horror. Just plain old fun. After reading that I felt like I could finally tackle horror again.

Where did Candy and Kendall come from? Is there a hero here, or just a pair of people tackling unexpected events? – Funny you should mention heroes. Since Death Dance is by far the most conventional story I’ve told, perhaps the ONLY conventional story I’ve ever told, I wanted to make sure it wasn’t generic. It’s not really for me to decide whether I accomplished that goal or not, but writing a story without a hero was something I kept in mind the whole time. I suppose you could say that “The Sisterhood” were heroes in their own way, but whatever. I had no intention of making Kendall the knight in shining armor.

You’re known for a few themes in your writing, goth girls, strange and irreverent plots, and antiheroes among them, what makes Death Dance stand out from your other books? – It’s the farthest I’ve strayed from absurdism. I never thought I’d write anything more serious than The Night Manager, which is a flat-out comedy, so I guess the serious tone that I keep throughout almost all of Death Dance sets it apart from the rest of my work.

Do you find it difficult to work humor into horror themes? Why or why not? – I find it difficult to do it in a way that I find satisfactory. Humor in any story is very much about balance. If a story is slapstick, it’s gotta be slapstick all the way through. When slapstick starts happening in a lighter comedy, it throws off the whole balance of the story and turns me off completely. So when writing humor, I’m scrutinizing every single detail. ​

Which of your books is your personal favorite? – Definitely BigBoobenstein. I think it’s probably my defining work. Lots of my books are a result of me trying something new, and sort of flying by the seat of my pants. When I wrote BigBoobenstein, however, I felt like an expert. Almost like I was telling my own life story, because I just knew what I was doing for once.

You’ve had some really great covers for your books, any tips for helping the cover artist create something that represents a book well? – Both of my regular cover artists: Kendall R. Hart and Justin T. Coons, receive my sketch of what I want the cover to look like before they start work on it. I send them a drawing that looks like something your toddler would scribble on the wall in crayon, and give them my best explanation of what I’m going for. The two of them have an uncanny ability to turn my scrawlings into gorgeous art.

Who are a few of your biggest influences for your work? Would you say your ideas are far removed from those who inspired them? – My influences are countless, and come from all over. Piers Anthony is a big one, as far as writers go. But I get just as much inspiration from watching awful low-budget movies from the 80s and 90s. Random things like abandoned malls and urban legends are big for my brain too. Conspiracy theories, alternative history, concepts like a Flat Earth. I don’t even know how to categorize the things that get my imagination working. I think my ideas are very much the actual things that inspire them, if that makes sense.

What are some other projects we can expect to see from you in the future? – Up next I’ve got a short book called John Titor is an Asshole which is kind of a sequel to Journey to the Edge of the Flat Earth. And I’ve got about 20 unfinished manuscripts I can pick up at any given time. I kind of like not knowing what my next move is going to be until it happens. So we shall see.

​

Jeff O'Brien has been self-publishing since 2013. He lives in New Hampshire. He loves death metal and basketball. You can find more about Jeff and purchase his books here:

​Candy is a woman with a lot on her plate. She's been a stripper for a while, a good one, and she's gotten used to a lot of things being not so great in her life, her abusive boyfriend Rhino among them. She thought maybe she'd finally unloaded it all when she took a chance and ran off in her car, but then she hadn't intended to wind up in a sleepy little nowhere spot like Hollows Point tackling a very weird night that just keeps getting weirder.

Kendall didn't have it much better. He thought he was on the straight and narrow, trying to make good as an accountant after he left his death metal career behind him years ago, but then he lost his job and a bought of listless depression set him out on a meandering drive with no real destination in mind. That night he wandered into Hollows Point on foot expecting life to get quite a bit worse after even his car failed him- instead he met Candy and the pair of them came together to face the strange little town and the open road ahead of them together.

The thing is, can anyone really be prepared to tackle a place as weird as Hollows Point?

Do you know how some of the most interesting and genuinely engaging films are the ones you come across late at night when you least expect to really find anything that can grab your attention? Those flicks, say something like Halloween: Season of the Witch, that you aren't sure about until you start to link into the plight of the all too familiar characters and the events unfolding around them? Death Dance in the Woods is very like those movies, quietly engaging, funny, and interesting. You find yourself really liking the characters and moving along through the plot wondering exactly where it's going to come out with all the shifts and turns, and coming out in some interesting territory.

Highly recommended to b movie horror fans who like a mix of horror, humor, sex, and blood.

I had originally been planning on setting this book firmly in the area of Crater Lake and featuring the Klamath tribes who live in the region, I've even collected quite a bit of info about them, their culture, and the legends surrounding the Crater Lake over the last year or two I've been fiddling with this book. Why? Well, this book is about aliens and isolation, a feeling of separateness and desperation that overcome a person when they're watching their people disappear one by one. An isolation made even larger by never having belonged in the first place and not knowing how to make the others see that you are trying to help them see the danger looming all around them.

However, I've always struggled with how out of place it felt and been concerned if I was going to screw it all up both in terms of representing the culture and region properly and truly feeling at home in the story if I couldn't be sure of those elements. I'm also a person who can appreciate a good couple episodes of X-files or movies featuring aliens but who also really never saw them as being a real thing in our actual world, so can I really believably convey a book about invasion and aliens that doesn't come off like what everyone has already read or rolled their eyes at? More importantly, can I make it have a serious impact that makes it both emotionally moving and chilling? Between all of that and the moving around we've been doing in the last year and change I've been yanked in and out of working on the book. Can you believe I thought this book was going to be one of my easy ones with minimal planning?

Well, last night we were driving and talking about all sorts of things, as we always seem to do when we're in the car, and I came to thinking about some of my own past and ancestry because we were talking about that funny little region around Chillicothe/Waverly/Peebles where my paternal grandparents and some of our other family originally settled down after leaving Kentucky. A place where some of our family still live today. This got the gears going about so many things, the poverty levels of the region, the broken down people dependent on the factory industry that seemed to come and go and change so often over the decades, the history it still represents even now, and the native population who saw fit to have built the Serpent Mound there a very long time before all of it- the natives to whom my own DNA is connected.

​What is this Serpent Mound?

I understand if maybe you haven't heard of it, its a regional thing, I grew up with it, and if memory serves, I even walked around the place when I was small with my eldest younger brother and possibly also brother number two ( I am the eldest of 5 kids, 3 of them brothers) when I was small enough for it all to be faded to a lot of sunshine and green hills that felt "happy" while I walked around with my family.

Well, here's the basic info for you. Once, a very long time ago in 1000 B C, the Fort Ancient culture (which later became the Adena and later at least influenced the Ojibwa and Anishinaabe cultures) saw fit to build this serpent shaped mound on a spur of rock which overlooked Ohio Brush Creek near a massive crater created by an asteroid that hit about 300 million year ago- needless to say, this was a sacred space for them, an axis mundi between Spirit and earth. Due to a very curious man named Francis Ward Putnam's "research" (lets be honest here, most of these dudes were digging in people's sacred burial sites with very little understanding of the damage they did) between 1886 and 1889 (his research made this the first archaeological preserve in the US btw) here in Ohio and the work of many others in other states like Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Kentucky and parts of New England a great deal was found out about what were labelled the "Mound People" of ancient post glacial shift North America and a whole hell of a lot of legends were started about "star people", magic growth properties of seeds which were in the presence of the mounds, and a whole host of other mysticism and other "mysterious goings on" Peebles itself has all sorts of legends rolling around- including crop circles and a supposed hidden air force base.

Yeah, I think you know where I'm headed here.

​OMG why was I so oblivious as to not think of using what I know and genuinely have a personal link to instead of something so far away from me I might fuck it up? I have a genuine chance to talk about my weird little Irish/Scot /Welsh and Native (Blackfoot, Cherokee, Anishinaabe, and possibly Mandan, most of whom are linked with the Adena in some fashion) blended Appalachian roots through my character and use it as a way to more deeply connect with my ancestral history! That is sooo something I've been open to the idea of exploring like this! Anywho, I'm changing the premise to suit this region and people, and I feel way more grounded in it now, even genuinely excited about the idea again!

Hi folks :) Today we're doing something a bit different on the old blog!

I asked Meghan Hyden, aka The Gal in the Blue Mask, to write a guest post explaining how authors can best go about asking for reviews and otherwise conducting themselves with book bloggers. She wrote a great post on the subject (Meghan is awesome and absolutely earned all her followers both author and reader) and I hope you find it as useful as I did :)

Amanda

​

Running a book blog is nothing like running an author blog, even if you do post some reviews for the things that you are reading, even if you do take on some review requests. It is so much more than that. I’ve heard fellow book bloggers describe it as a second full-time job, and I agree with them completely. It’s not just the time that we put in to reading your book (and all the other books on the list), but it’s the hour or so that goes into just setting up the blog post (we need photos and descriptions and specifics and links, a lot of which are not provided to us by the author, so we have to go in search for them), the hours it takes writing the review (yup, hours), and the time we take sharing that link anywhere and everywhere we can. That’s not even including the reposting of the review on such sites as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, and BookLikes. There’s the time we put into reading and responding to emails, scheduling, and all the business behind-the-scenes things that a blogger does every day. There’s the other blog posts we do, the research we do on those subjects, and the networking we take part in. I tell you all of this, not as a complaint, but to show you just how much we love what it is that we are doing, and how much work goes into it. I feel that some people don’t realize all that we do on a daily basis… and this is while holding down full-time jobs, having a family, and attempting to have a life.

I’ve spent a bit thinking about the different things I wish every author knew before contacting me, and hopefully this will help make your connecting with us a little easier (on both of our parts) and run a little smoother.

1.Know who you’re talking to… and I’m not just talking about the horrible slip-ups where I’ve been called by the wrong name or addressed as Mr.

I always suggest that you take a moment to “get to know” the blogger or reviewer that you are reaching out to. Look around their blog for a little bit, check out any social media links that they have there, look them up on Goodreads and Amazon. This gives you a chance to see how they review, and allows you to write a message that is a little more personable.

It may take a little more time, but it is definitely worth it, and can be the difference between having your email sent to the trash (or worse, marked as spam) and creating a relationship with the blogger that will assure you reviews on all of your future releases. (That’s the big picture right there. Do you just want one review on this book, which is at the forefront of your mind right now, or do you want a blogger that you can go to when you have another release, or when you want to get yourself out there a little more? A lot of us do interviews and other things that can help you with your marketing.)

Be careful, though. If you go with the compliment route when you’re reaching out, make sure it’s a sincere one. (I had someone tell me that they loved my review once, but when I asked which review, they never emailed me back. We’re a curious group, and like to know what we’re doing right, and which of our reviews or posts are catching people’s eye enough that they contact us.) I’ve had several authors catch my attention by pointing out an exact quote from a review that they especially liked (and one who I will never forget who quoted the book description from Amazon as if I had written that myself). If you see that they reviewed a book similar to yours, that’s a great way to start a conversation, but make sure it’s actually a similar book. (I had an author offer me an erotica book based on it being similar to a gardening book I reviewed. I’m still not sure how that works.)

2.Take the time to look for the blogger’s Review Policy. (Another “time consuming” thing that is totally worth it.) You’ll find a lot of important information here i.e. the “terms” they have on reviewing (you know, what you’ll be getting is their honest opinion on your book, that they reserve the right to not review it at all, and that they can’t promise a specific time frame), whether they are still taking review submissions (be polite and respect their wishes if they are not), what kind of books they will and will not read, and the pertinent information they need in order to make the decision on your book. That last one is VERY important, because there are bloggers that will completely disregard your email, no matter how interesting the book sounds, if you don’t give them the information they require (no, a picture of the cover and a link to Amazon will not do).

I can’t tell you how annoying it is to receive an email that is just a bunch of gibberish about a book, especially when it is obvious that it is just cut and pasted from different places (the different sizes, fonts, and colors are a big clue). It may be just me, but I take my blog very seriously, and it bothers me to no end when people reach out to me for something on a professional basis without even trying to look professional. It’s nice that y’all are very proud of the good reviews that the book have received so far, but we don’t need to read them in our emails. (Personally, I don’t read other people’s reviews before I read a book I’m accepting as a review, but if I wanted to read that, I would go in search of the ones that you aren’t really proud of.)

Say hello. Introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about you as an author. Give us the information on your book i.e. title, place in the series (if applicable - and if it’s not the first, be willing to send those books to the blogger as well), genre (be specific), publisher and publication date, page count (this is one of my requests, as it helps me figure out how long it will take me to read the book), and book description. Include the cover photo, the link to the book on Amazon, and the link to your blog/website so that we can get to know you.

3.Here’s a few don’ts:

Don’t just send the book. I’ve never really been able to figure out what the point of this is, but I had an author tell me once that this is his way of doing things because it “forces” the blogger to review the book now that it’s in their hands.

Don’t expect your book to be the very next thing that the blogger reads. Most bloggers have a schedule already created. If you have a specific time frame that you would like the book reviewed in, feel free to discuss that with the blogger, but know that they may not be able to do what you specifically want.

If a blogger says that they only read a specific genre (i.e. romance) or books directed to a specific group (i.e. young adult), don’t send them a review request for a book that doesn’t fall within that genre, or even worse, send them one in a genre that they specifically say they will not read (i.e. erotica or horror). (I talk a little more about genres below.)

Don’t reach out to them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or in Messenger unless they specifically ask you to do so. Most bloggers either have their email address there or a form for you to fill out. Those other places, even if they are used for blog business as well, are there personal spaces, and shows them from the start that you are not professional and you do not see them as professional either. (I would like to note that, once there’s a rapport, this “don’t” may change.)

Don’t argue with the blogger if you don’t agree with their review. As I said before, the review is an honest one based on the blogger’s opinion of the book. Arguing with them won’t change the matter, and will not make you look good. (You would think this wouldn’t be something necessary to state, but it seems that it is. I’ve not only seen it happened to a few bloggers I know, but I’ve been attacked several times by authors as well.)

Don’t assume that a 3 star review is a bad one. Personally, that’s my middle ground. I hardly ever give anything below that, and I use my 3 star reviews to offer constructive criticism, and to point out what I did and did not like about the book. Not only is constructive criticism helpful to the author (if you take the time to read it and take it in), but it’s also helpful to future readers (some may love the things that I did not like or vice versa).

4.And here’s a few dos:

Utilize genres, especially sub-genres. This is one of my number one pieces of advice as an editor, and that’s mainly from what I learned being a blogger. Ya see, I loathe romance books, and will not read erotica. But there are ways around this.

Erica Lucke Dean is an author who writes romance, and she will get me every time with her romance malarky (haha). Not only is she a fantastic writer (no, she didn’t pay me to write this), but her characters grab you every time, and it’s hard for me to turn down anything that she offers me. Her way of convincing me to read the first book of her Flames of Time series was telling me that it’s a romance, but so much more. If you look her series up on Amazon, you’ll see that the genres are “Romance > Time Travel” and “Romance > Paranormal > Witches & Wizards.” Instead of putting just romance, she made sure to let readers know that there is a lot more going on in the books than just the sweet lovey-dovey stuff that some of us just can’t stand, which opens you up to more readers. If your book falls into several different genres, and they read at least one of them, make sure you share this information with the blogger, but remember that they may need a bit of convincing. (Notice I said “convincing” and not “arguing.”)

Contact them on a personal level. In other words, treat them like a human, and not like a machine.

I’m going to use Erica as an example again here. Whenever I speak to her, she asks me how life is going, or asks me about something she either saw me post on Facebook or something we had discussed previously. She’s always very sincere, and turns the request into a conversation, not just a “here, read my book.” I especially love that we’re able to discuss the books that she sends me, and that she is honestly interested in my opinion on them. (She says that it’s even more so since I dislike romance haha.)

Now, some bloggers may not be very open to this, and if they are not, you’ll get all the cues, but it never hurts to try “making a friend.” It shows them that they are more than just a vessel to read your book, and helps to increase that “future relationship” I discussed earlier.

Say thank you. Even if you didn’t request that we review your book - that means we spent our money on it, or borrowed it from the library, or received it as a gift - we did take the time to read it and review it. Go to the blog and say thank you. Go to Amazon or Goodreads, or wherever you found the review, and like it.

Share those links everywhere you can, and often. This is always something that leaves me puzzled. An author asks for a review, or participates in an interview, or takes part in a guest post on my blog - and then they never share the links. Why? You’re not sharing the links for me (though I do appreciate it), but for yourself, and you should have enough respect for yourself and what you do to share those links on all your social media, write posts of your own sharing the links, even have a space on your blog that sends readers to the different reviews that have been written on your blogs, as well as the interviews and such that you have done. That helps YOU with marketing. We, honestly, can only do so much.

I wish you luck in your reaching out to bloggers and your relationship building. We’re a great group of people, and definitely ones you want on your side. Thanks, Amanda, for having me on today. This was a lot of fun (and my first EVER guest post on someone’s blog - not as scary as I thought it would be haha).BIO:My name is Meghan, and I’m “The Gal” from over at The Gal in the Blue Mask, a rather eclectic (and awesome, if I do say so myself) book blog, even if it does sometimes look like I read way too much horror haha. I started The Gal in the Blue Mask back in 2014 because I wanted a place where I could be myself and have my own rules, a place where I could not only review the books that I was reading, but help my readers learn more about the authors behind those books. To be honest, I never thought anyone, other than my mom, would be looking at it, which is probably why it was so easy for me to just jump into it. After a couple of months, I realized that I was getting a bit of notice, and was super pleased that my mother would go through all the trouble of coming back to my site several times on a daily basis to make me feel good about myself. It wasn’t until I received my first email asking for a review that I realized other people were actually reading it, and that maybe all those views weren’t just my mom. When I’m not reading and book blogging, I’m most likely editing (Hyde ’n’ Seek Editing), hanging out at Disney World or swimming in my backyard, cooking up some recipe that makes WAY more than two people can eat, cuddling my occasionally sweet kitties (and posting pictures on Instagram of their cuteness), watching more British TV than an American should, or being snarky on Facebook. I like meeting new people, so don’t hesitate to reach out.Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/M.S.HydenThe Gal in the Blue Mask on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheGalintheBlueMask/Twitter: https://twitter.com/RaiyineInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/raiyine/Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/13212231-meghanBookLikes: http://raiyine.booklikes.com

Edward P. Cardillo, a member of the Horror Writers Association, is an author of horror, science fiction, and dark fantasy. He is the winner of 3 Readers Favorite International Book Awards, JEA Writer of the Year 2013, and is in the Facebook Zombie Book of the Month Club Hall of Fame.

By day Cardillo is a clinical psychologist working with children on the autism spectrum, geriatrics, and adults with Down Syndrome. By night he concocts tales to terrify his readers...

He enjoys both jobs immensely.

Check out his website to view his books, interviews, awards, etc.: edwardcardillo.com

For the uninitiated, Edward P. Cardillo is an author who is rather fond of telling us about what’s going on in the dark. The author of some very popular books dealing with the dead such as the I Am Automaton and Creeping Dead series he’s had a lot to say on the subject. Ed, could you tell us a bit about what we’ll find in The Dark is Full of Monsters?

This is a deeply psychological horror tale. The main characters all find themselves in an unfamiliar setting, bringing the baggage that comes with severe trauma. And I’m not even talking about supernatural trauma. I’m talking about real live trauma inflicted by monsters of the human variety. However, it is the trauma and how each character deals with it, that prepares them for facing a preternatural horror stalking the woods of a sleepy town in upstate New York. It’s raw and visceral, yet deeply symbolic.

Oh, and there are zombies…but this isn’t a traditional zombie tale. Don’t expect a clone of The Walking Dead, or The Creeping Dead for that matter. This is a completely different animal.What inspired you to write it?

I love upstate New York. I love the woods. I could just get lost in it all, leaving society and any problems I may have behind for a bit, finding peace in nature. However, some people from the city (like my wife) have a way of projecting their innermost fears on the great unknown of the wilderness, using it as a blank canvas. It’s very Freudian. It’s dark, vast, foreign, and unsettling to them. I wanted to tap into that fear. I wanted to explore it. I wanted to show how strong individuals cope with their demons by facing their fears head-on.

Dark deals with the nature of fear and how it affects life for its characters. In particular it’s a crucial element of how our lead, Mark Rivera, who suffers from PTSD, is living. What did you want to convey about both fear and PTSD with this character?

Fear is a visceral thing that is hard-wired into our evolution and physiology. It is a useful emotion that is crucial in self-preservation, but unchecked, it is a detrimental force that can ruin lives. I wanted to convey that fear is universal, although the nature of it is specific to the individual and that individual’s experiences. As a psychologist who helps people wrestle with anxiety of all kinds, I also wanted to show that it could be faced and overcome. Mark has to confront his personal trauma and feelings of helplessness to face a monster of the non-human variety. A psychologist himself, he knows what he needs to do, but since he’s right in the middle of his own personal hell, he finds it hard to be objective. It’s one thing to advise others and guide them through it. It’s another thing entirely to walk the walk yourself, to feel the paralysis of terror overriding rational thought.

How much do you feel his PTSD changed how he responded to the events going on around him and how he adapted to the changes that come to make such drastic changes for him and his wife Wendy?

Something very traumatic happened to Mark when he lived in the Bronx. He struggles to cope with the aftermath and decides (pretty unilaterally) to get away from it all by moving way upstate. His PTSD makes him very hypervigilant, and it paralyzes him, invoking feelings of helplessness and loss of control. It’s like that dream that most of us have, where there’s a monster chasing us, and we turn to run, but our legs won’t move. We cannot run, we cannot fight, and the monster is closing in on us. Part of his growth or arc as a character is to overcome this feeling, particularly when the people he cares about are in danger. Is his concern for his wife and friends enough to override the paralysis of fear? Can he regain some sense of self-mastery?Wendy, his wife, gives up her career as a teacher and makes the move with Mark. She doesn’t necessarily agree with his decision to move them upstate, but she wants to be supportive. She’s out of her element, and she is torn between advocating for her own mental well-being and her husband’s. It is her great sense of empathy, however, that establishes a link with the monster stalking them. She forges a unique connection with the horror lurking out in the dark, channeling its great sense of malice and bloodlust, a sensation that terrifies and disturbs her.

Laquan, who is one of the boys living in a facility for troubled kids in upstate New York, is another central character. Can you tell us a bit about him and his motivations as a character?

Laquan is a kid who grew up in a rough area and got into trouble, but for things like shoplifting and other minor mischief. He’s not someone who hurts others. He’s just trying to survive the monsters in his life, whether it be his mother’s abusive boyfriend or those in his neighborhood who do hurt people. Like Mark, he’s a transplant from the Bronx, a fellow fish-out-of-water. It’s something over which they immediately bond. At the William Scott School for Special Children, Mark deals with all kinds of troubled youth who have run afoul of the legal system. Recognizing that Laquan isn’t a violent offender, but rather a victim of trauma, Mark identifies with the boy. He quickly takes a liking to him.Laquan is now trying to survive up in this school for delinquents in the middle of the woods. In particular, he’s become the target of a rather nasty bully named Jason, a sadistic kid who has no compunction about hurting other students, or even staff. Additionally, Laquan is the first in this story to have an encounter with the monster in the dark. He and Mark discuss it symbolically in their sessions, and the monster becomes a metaphor for their struggle with their demons. Little does Mark know that it’s more than a metaphor…

Would you like to tell us a bit about the monster in Dark? What inspired you to use it here?

Without revealing its exact nature here, I will say that it is the ultimate boogeyman. Epitomizing fear itself, it is that malicious presence that stalks the darkness, dwelling on the edges of civilization, as old as time itself. It feeds off of the terror it inflicts. It is why we fear the dark, the unknown, the vastness of the eldritch wilderness.

Why do you feel Wendy had such a connection with the creature? Why is her adaptation so different from her husband’s?

It is Wendy’s empathy for her husband’s plight that makes her particularly susceptible to the creature lurking in the dark. Having abandoned her job and home in the Bronx, she too is a fish-out-of-water, which makes her vulnerable to the monster’s manipulation. Feeling like a spectator on the sidelines of her husband’s struggle with PTSD, her connection with the monster puts her on the playing field, where she now feels she can make a difference. Her empathy empowers her to become a change agent. She wants to be more than a supportive hand to hold. She wants to get in there and kick some ass. What are some other projects you have in the works or coming out in the near future?I’m currently working on a dinosaur thriller/adventure novella for Severed Press, to be released this year as well.

​Pembroke Sinclair is a literary jack of all trades, playing her hand at multiple genres. She has written an eclectic mix of fiction ranging from horror to sci-fi and even some westerns. Born in Rock Springs, Wyoming--the home of 56 nationalities--it is no wonder Pembroke ended up so creatively diverse. Her fascination with the notions of good and evil, demons and angels, and how the lines blur have inspired her writing. Pembroke currently lives in Columbus, Nebraska, with her husband, two spirited boys, a black lab named Ryder, two fluffy Corgis named Floki and Siggy, and a rescue kitty named Alia, who happens to be the sweetest, most adorable kitty in the world! She cannot say no to dessert, orange soda, or cinnamon. She loves rats and tatts and rock and roll and wants to be an alien queen when she grows up.

Tell me a little about your book Humanity's Hope, what can we expect to find in this one?

Humanity’s Hope is the first book in the Saving Humanity series, and it follows the story of Caleb, who is trying to find normalcy after losing his family and friends to zombies. He struggles quite a bit with this because he has PTSD. He then finds out that he’s immune to whatever makes a zombie a zombie, so in addition to his mental issues, he becomes a pawn in someone’s game—and he has to figure out what that is.

Tell us about Caleb, what makes him different than other zombpoc protagonists?

Caleb is different from a lot of other zombpoc protagonists because he isn’t your typical tough guy. One of the things zombie stories do really well is show how heroes can rise to the challenge and fight against the undead and whatever evil entity rises along with the creatures (usually some type of power-hungry human). Caleb can rise to the challenge, but it’s often reluctantly and he second guesses his actions all the time.

Your books fall pretty squarely among YA novels, what do you like to feel you add to what's already out there?

I feel like I add another fun story with zombies that young adults can read and enjoy. I also hope to introduce a character that isn’t always strong and that struggles with issues that someone can relate to.

How does the apocalyptic experience differ for teens as compared to adults? What struggles do your characters in books such as Humanity's Hope and Life After the Undead have that might not be as direct an issue for adult characters?

The different between teens and adults in an apocalyptic situation is the amount of experience they have. Teens are incredibly resourceful and flexible, but they lack world knowledge and experience, so they might struggle a little bit with surviving. However, on the other side of that coin, unlike adults, most teens aren’t jaded and set in their ways, so they have the ability and opportunity to rebuild society in ways that adults may have never considered.

You've got quite a widespread field of experience in genre fiction, favoring darker horror favorites like zombies and demons but also covering topics such as romance and science fiction. Would you say there is an overall theme across the board?

There’s a darkness in all of my writing, even in the romantic and science fiction stories. My characters often find themselves in uncomfortable positions, such as the end of the world or trying to discover who they are, and those are pretty scary topics. But I believe that through fears and uncomfortable situations, my characters can discover who they truly are or who they want to be.

What sort of stories do you prefer to write? Across all genres or in each type?

I prefer to write young adult stories. I like having characters that are naïve because then they can learn from their mistakes and be angsty. Adult characters can do the same, but it’s a little more annoying when they are whiny.

Are there character arcs that you like to cover in different ways or do you like to change them around consistently to change things up?

I try to change them up because each character is a unique individual and has their own story.

What else can we expect to see from you in the near future?

You can expect lots in the near future! The third book in The Ifs series (middle grade books), Undead Ifs, will be coming out; the second audiobook in the Life After the Undead series (Death to the Undead) will soon be available; and the second book in the Saving Humanity series (Edge of Humanity) will be available.

A lifetime fan of horror, sci fi, the macabre, mystery, and fantasy, R. E. Lyons digs deep within his soul to write character driven novels that, while influenced by his darker interests, can also be heavily laced with fantasy, romance, mystery, history and magic. R. E. Lyons has lived his life filled with storytelling from generations of story tellers and, as you will notice by his children, the tradition continues with marvelous enchanting stories. Some stories of R. E. Lyons are Ghostly Tales of The Old West, Werewolf's Lament and Birth of a Witch to be found in anthologies from JEA Publishing. Some published works include Novel series of the Werewolf First Moon, and I Will Love You Forever. Rouge Desires was published in March 2018. He is looking forward to growing as a author in print.

Your first novel was Werewolf First Moon; can you tell us a bit about how it was written and what it’s about?

Sure, Amanda. When I wrote the first draft of Werewolf First Moon, it was called Werewolf’s Lament. I remember at that time, that I was asked if I would write a werewolf short story for an anthology being published for JEA Publishing. The Anthology was later entitled Full Moon Slaughter I had written a couple of short stories for two other analogies, and this would be my third for JEA Publishing. The first two anthology short stories took me a while to write. But this one, the words kept flowing out of me like a steady stream. In a matter of a few hours I had the first draft written. It was like the story was waiting to be told. Needed to be told. I could see what was happening as I wrote it.I could hear all the sounds, feel the deep emotions. The peace of the woods, the feeling of being on the hunt for food, being one with nature. Then the beginning of knowing something wasn’t right, something was off. But being stubborn, determined to stay on track, to keep all the attention on the hunt, Wilton Wilson would not accept there was anything wrong. All the while, he was beginning to change from a ordinary man into a werewolf. A werewolf that did not care who or what it would kill.No matter what Wilson would normally do, or who he cared about, the beast within had only one thing in mind. To kill, to destroy everything that made Wilton the man he was. To break his will to where he would crawl up within himself and die, so the beast would be the only thing left of Wilton. No love, no caring, no remorse. Nothing that you could remotely call human.When I had written the small story and it was accepted, I thought to myself, “That was a nice little story. I’m done with it now. What else can I write about?” But the strange thing was, where I was done with it, it wasn’t done with me. The story kept unfolding in my mind. It wasn’t told completely. That short story was only the beginning. There was more. Much more. It invaded my waking hours, my dreams. The only way I was going to have peace of mind was to keep telling the story.

This is a novel about families, love, and darkness as much as about werewolves, could you tell us a little about Wilton and his family?

Wilton Wilson, and his brother Wilbur, lost their parents when they were young. So they were orphans, forced to grow up without the guidance of any adult. It wasn’t an easy life. They were living way back, deep in the woods with no one else around.They learned early, that if they were to survive, they would have to work together. Expect no help from anyone else. Through this they had a deep bond between them like no other brothers. Each had certain things that they must do in order to survive. That they were determined to do.Their parents had taught them when they were little to be very religious, as parents did back in those days of the 1600’s. So they thanked God for all they had and if there was something they couldn’t do on their own, they would ask God to help them. They were taught good and evil. They were to avoid evil at any cost and ask for the protection from evil by God.What happened in the woods literally tore Wilton’s world apart. Both brother’s really. Wilbur had found a woman that he fell in love with. He quickly married her, bringing her back to the cottage to live there. Wilton, on the other hand, could not forget that he had lost almost everyone he ever loved. He was afraid if he loved another, he would lose her too. So he held off marrying her as long as he could.With every family, we inherit a few genes from our parents that control our lives. Both brothers were about to learn what they had inherited from their parent in a cruel, horrible way.

Why did you choose to make it a story about a family in Appalachia?

My ancestors came from Ireland. They settled deep in the Appalachian Mountains, where there is a mystical, magical feeling here. When you have lived here for a while, you become closer to the ways of nature. You bond with your family. Depend on them more; feel the loss more should something happen to them. It is a feeling like no other place I have known.There are many legends here. Some, so strangely told, that you would have to consider them true. For who could make up such tales? Though it is the twenty first century, there are still so many things in the Appalachian Mountains left unanswered. A perfect place for a werewolf.

It’s part of a series you intend to write, how long do you think the series will be? When might we expect the sequel?

To answer that, I would have to know the complete story. As of today, I have not been told the end of the story. I have only glimpsed the beginning. With all the twists and turns that have happened so far, I am not sure there will ever be a end to it. The next installment is being written as we speak. I would expect it to be out in the next few months. I too, am waiting to see what happens to Wilton Wilson.

Rogue Desires is also intended to be a series, this one about vampires, what happens in this book? What brought it about?

Rogue Desires is a story that came about when a friend of mine and I started talking about vampires. We both had enjoyed some stories about them and started to talk about what would happen if the story happened at a different area of the United States and so forth.My friend told me that she would write down a few ideas, both my ideas and hers. Then I could write a story about those ideas. She wanted to see if I could write a story based on them. She was surprised that I did so well. The rest you can read about in Rogue Desires the series.To create a good story, I feel you have to take a person or people in a ordinary life and then make something happen. You can’t take a person, have them be placed in a horror or anything else, without showing their human side first. Then throughout the story, keep adding information about their hopes and dreams that made them the way they are. Then if you read about something happening to them, you can feel closer to them. Like you know them. A person that might be in your family or a neighbor. Perhaps a close friend. Someone you can relate to.That’s the premise of all my stories. Get to know the character, then watch what happens to them.Now this is the premise of Rogue Desires.First there is a mother and her daughter living next to a wooded area out in the country with no one living next to them, for miles around. They don’t have much. What they do have, they have worked very hard to get and keep. The father has left somewhere and not been seen since. The only thing they have left is a restaurant that he and the mother had started.The mother tries very hard not to show that she is missing her husband for the sake of their daughter, who misses her father very much.Then one night as they are preparing for their dinner at home, a knock comes at their door. When the mother goes to answer the door to see who it is, everything becomes silence. The daughter, worrying about her mother, goes to check on her. What she sees and hears, she will remember for the rest of her life. It will haunt her, as she hears her mother scream out to her, “Run! Run as fast as you can, Lea! Run and never look back!”So begins the terror that will follow her, until at last, it catches her in Seattle, Washington. A terror that will attack her, her friends, and her family throughout her life. It will not go away! Its full intention is to destroy all that she holds dear.

What’s different about your vampires and this book in particular? Would you say its horror or a cross genre novel that fits in several areas?

To me, horror is when something of the supernatural comes and attacks you. So this would be horror. In Rogue Desires, many things of the supernatural are at play. There are good, evil, love, friendship, loyalty, gore, grossness, loss. The first book is laying out how it starts, as well as things to come. As with my Werewolf series, each book will become darker, have more blood and gore. It is a series you won’t soon forget. It will haunt you for a very long time.

I Will Love You Forever is definitely a very different sort of novel, featuring death, loss, destruction and the search for love beyond the grave, what would you say it’s about as a whole?

I Will Love you Forever is the very first novel I wrote, it came before any of the short stories or novels. It is about a love that will never end. Not even death can stop it. It is a story about a couple from two different countries who find each other when the world has become mad with war that has just ended. The world is filled with hatred for its different races. No one wants to trust, or even like the other. Somehow the world has to change its mind back to love and peace. To realize we are all one people. The human race.The girl, desperate to make a difference, has left the Philippines, after the Japanese were forced out by the allied forces, to help her country once again stand on their own.The boy, a only child, has also decided to make something for himself and his family.By chance, they go to the same collage and fall in love.It’s about the hopes and dreams of these two, to live and love forever together. But, it’s also about the struggles of this couple, the trials and hardships they face when someone interferes with their relationship. The death that follows, the corruption all about them. Fighting to keep his love and his friends safe after his death. The fight to keep his love from committing suicide to join him. It’s about learning answers about themselves and each other. It’s about forces that control what happens to you after you die. It’s about a love that will stay alive lifetime after lifetime.

Do you consider I Will Love You Forever a horror novel or something more of a novel about loss and love?

There are so many variables in this story. It has a constant of the love between this couple. It has horror in what this man’s ghost must do to keep his love, family, and friends safe. It has corruption, adventure, detective work. There are many things in play here. There are supernatural forces at play. I don’t think you can put it in one classification.

​Do you always write horror, or are there other types of fiction you like to write as well? Is there such a thing as having too narrow a view of what horror can be and is? What do you think horror is really about?I don’t lock myself into one type of writing. I believe the world is made up of all things that need to be written about. I intend to write what I feel I should write about. I am writing about several books that are not considered horror.But what is horror anyway? To me, horror is when something bad happens in an ordinary life. It causes pain, sorrow, loss. If you ask a soldier what horror is, he will tell you being in battle with the enemy, watching his fellow soldiers being blown to pieces right beside him. Not knowing when or if you will survive the next minute. Ask a mother or father whose son or daughter has been hurt or killed for no reason. Ask a drug addict about the last bad trip he had when he saw all these weird creatures come after him or had to fight to stay alive. Ask someone who has been bullied so much he would rather die than keep on living. Ask a bipolar person who feels the world is against him.What do I think horror is? It’s all these things and so very much more. It doesn’t have to be supernatural. It’s something that hurts you so bad you can’t bare it.You’re also an author whose taken part in a lot of anthologies, can you tell me about a few of your favorite stories and anthos you’ve worked on?To tell you the truth, I have lost count of the anthologies I’ve been in. I know a lot of them. It is a learning experience that all authors should get a taste of. I have a fondness for the werewolf ones most of all. Werewolf’s Lament which was in Full Moon Slaughter, Poor Man’s Luck which was in Vamps vs Wolz 2, A Witch is Born which was in Season of the Witch, Ghostly Tale of the Old West which was in Strange Dominion - Weird Tales of the Old West.To me, it was a honor to work alongside of so many talented authors creating those anthologies. Each and every one I was in. I saw each and every one as a challenge to do the best I could.Book of Dark Stories is a short collection, is it made up of stories from anthologies alone or are there some new pieces in it too?There are some short stories and poems I had published in anthologies. There are one or two that was not published that I threw in there. I co-wrote a few with Lisa Dabrowski for anthologies that is not in there as well as some more.Which do you prefer writing, stories or novels?There is something to be said about being a team creating a book. I enjoyed that very much. I am proud of that. Still, I enjoy having the chance to put a lot more in a novel.You’ve had a busy year, with four books out and several others in progress, how often do you write? Yes, I am proud to have gotten four novels out in 3 months. I like to set goals for myself. At the end of last year I set a goal of 12 novels out in one year. A novel a month. I am going to try doing that very thing!My mind is constantly creating new stories. I am constantly with my laptop, jotting down an idea or writing on the ones I have. I am hoping that people will enjoy reading them as much as I do writing them.How many other books do you have in progress?I have 34 books started at last count. Perhaps more. Unfortunately, I had more, but lost them from computer failure.

You are the mistress of mayhem and gross out themes, the more bizarre and likely to stick in your head the better. What made you choose to write in this genre? What made you the Queen of Filth?My first published story, My Lovely Wife, is how I ended up writing in this genre. I had toyed with genre writing before then but not to the extent that I would have something published.My Lovely Wife started with me trying to be as emotionally detached as possible. I know this is pretentious, but the literary equivalent of Kraftwerk. I had been trying to accomplish that within Seth (available on my website at https://danibrownqueenoffilth.weebly.com/seth.html ) for some time. Reaction to Seth from people close to me ranged from negative to outright abusive. All except from my son’s late father. His reaction was, “you have to make it more extreme”. He bought me a copy of 120 Days of Sodom for influence. I eventually developed some serious emotional hangups to working on the piece. Not very good when the point is to write without emotions.

I started a shorter piece, My Lovely Wife. I couldn’t afford an editor. My life was very quickly going down the toilet with the stress of the projections of people around me. Every single mother stereotype projected onto me, regardless of the evidence pointing in the opposite direction (as is the case with lots of lone parents). No one would listen to what I was saying about what I want to do with my life. I needed people to back off and let me do it. All people saw was a single mother with no ambition or education. At one point I offered to staple my degree to someone’s forehead. I had laid out for too many people what I was doing, when I hoped to accomplish it and what I planned on doing next. The vast majority of these people around me didn’t take in a word I had to say. I go into more detail on my website in the author note’s section. I’m not particularly comfortable with releasing that sort of information about my life, but since I’ve posted that, people have been leaving me alone. Finally. It is 2018. Worth the trade-off as far as I’m concerned as I can finally pick up the pieces of my life. And finally return to the person I actually am rather than these increasingly bizarre projections of a character someone else created.

At the time, I had two pieces finished, Broccoli and My Lovely Wife. As I mourned for Seth, I would watch those awful real-life crime programmes, which helped develop Seth’s character with the hope that I would be able to pick it back up again. I wrote My Lovely Wife after taking in all these awful crimes and acts of domestic violence on the TV.

My Lovely Wife needed to be edited. Due to my total lack of funds, I had my boyfriend at the time edit it. He had never come across experimental writing before so edited it into genre fiction. It was accepted by Morbidbooks right away. I figured one published book and people would leave me alone to build up a life for me and my son. How wrong was I!?!

After it was published, reviews started to come in, as they do. “Brutal torture porn” stood out. My now ex-boyfriend couldn’t edit out the emotional detachment. From that first published novella, I developed a reputation for being able to write the extreme.

Broccoli, which I have since self-published, has been reviewed as me trying to describe body fluids in as many words as possible. I’m not going to disagree with that.

Things didn’t get better for me after My Lovely Wife was released. In fact, they became worse with “you’ve written a book, now what are you going to do?”. The mild PTSD I was expected to make a full recovery from as I did more of the things I wanted to do developed into a full blown, twice treated case of C-PTSD complete with panic attacks as people continued hounding and harassing me into having the life they saw for single mothers inside their own warped heads. Throw in some increasingly worse sexual harassment and the medical advice changed from “keep doing what you’re doing to write about those mother-fuckers, kill them in your stories”. Obviously the doctors never used the word “mother-fucker” but that was the advice. The doctors realized how hard it can be to get rid of toxic people. I was basically spiraling from high-functioning mild mental illness to low-functioning with the stress. The doctor saw me for who I was and hoped to accomplished with my time here on Earth. I was lucky, as it could have been a case of the doctor being as bad as the people around me.

Reptile was my first clumsy attempt to kill off fictional versions of the people bothering me and reclaim my life and privacy. I’m a typically private person. I had never written with my own emotions before. I was writing it as people were telling me I was worthless. Not in those words, but telling me what I should be doing, no matter how bad what they thought I should be doing would be for the future I wanted to build. Add in sexual harassment and people approaching me with stuff I couldn’t possibly have the solution for or care about and all I could do was write. I would wake up really early and churn out story after story, because these people had me for daylight hours. Every time I would successfully escape from one, two more would appear.

At some point during 2014-early 2017, I didn’t believe I had a future. But I kept fighting. I didn’t really perfect the technique until it came time to writing Sparky the Spunky Robot later on in 2017. By the time I had started to write Sparky, I was in therapy for the second time. My life had escaped from me to the point I didn’t know who I was any longer or what had happened to put me there. But I was much more mature and my memories were coming back to me. I remembered who I was. Also, I had managed to clear out the vast majority of super negative, toxic people from my life. These people are like leeches. And could finally use some of the therapy techniques to deal with the toxic people I can’t go no contact with.

Although I have made attempts to get back into writing Seth over the last few years, I haven’t seriously sat there working on it. The intention, apart from being Kraftwerk, was to write the opposite of me. I have a hateful, negative male character, high sexed but uncertain of his sexuality. One day, I would like to finish that story. I celebrate his birthday every year.

The group of stories I’m writing now (I’ve called the entire group Tainted Love/Push the Button) has the experimental, it has the porn of my earlier writing. But it also has the genre fiction. The extreme. And it has some of me in the stories. I’m hoping by the last one, it’ll have the emotional detachment again. It has people I don’t like, but dealt with in a much different fashion to how I dealt with them in Reptile. I’m learning how to combine different parts of people I don’t like to create something new and write out all the stress. As I do that, I’m happier. I have less stress. And my life is moving in the direction I want it to go. As I write these stories, I feel better and more confident within myself. I’m also more inclined to tell someone to Fuck off at the first sign of bullshit. I’ve been slowly buying Kraftwerk records in German (they’re really expensive) to put on during the final stretch of these stories. My tribute to Seth.

I’ve already mentioned Broccoli and the body fluids. When writing Broccoli, it felt like chasing the highs I had when I was a teenage stoner. Stuck in a spiraling out of control life, every time I would sit down to write, I would try to chase the Broccoli high as I call it. As Broccoli is all body fluids, there’s a sea of vomit and diarrhea, I would write a lot about body fluids and a lot of body horror during 2014-2017. My stories became increasingly violent as well.

Although I consider Threatrum Mortuum (VSX and The Year’s Best Hardcore Horror 3), Erosion (Triggered) and Sparky the Spunky Robot (unpublished novella) to be a bridge between older stories (post Broccoli, which was my first completed novel) and Tainted Love/Push the Button, I still have problems with the PTS and still write fun things (we’ll get to that in the next question).

I’m not fighting the PTS as I did between 2014-2017. I’m letting it come. And sometimes, actively chasing it myself. During 2014-2017, a lot of the negative toxic leeches would use what happened to me many, many years ago, stuff that although it had a bearing on my life in the physical sense (I don’t have much money and really need a new Mac), it didn’t have any emotional impact whatsoever. Stuff that basically would have been forgotten, if these horrible people didn’t bring it up. I’m going back over the stuff they were using as an excuse to keep my life bad with their hounding and harassment. They’d blame the past for my increasing distress, when really, it was the present. A concept a lot of people don’t seem capable of grasping.

I think I finally re-found my Broccoli high. Not the same as taking acid, but just as fun. And a hell of a lot more fun than smoking a joint. More productive too. I love to write.

I’m still the Queen of Filth. I’m not allowed to talk about the first story from Tainted Love/Push the Button at this point in time, but the second one, 56 Seconds has lots of elements. It has the body fluids, in this case, cum and lots of it (okay, not as much as Sparky). It has the hypersexual. It has violence. It has a bit of my opinion of someone in it. It also has some sensual erotica, something I haven’t been able to write in many years. And it was a lot of fun to write. It was fun to let the story flow from my head to my fingertips. I repeated myself a lot within it (hello, Kraftwerk). A lot of people I have been close to at various points in my life have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and I was using the symptoms of that within it, trying to understand and put myself into the place of someone with BPD. While writing that story, right at the end, I didn’t get a decent night sleep until it was done, so I guess I managed to get some sort of mania thing going on.

I’m looking at NPD and anti-social personality disorder in Becoming, which is the third of this group. And trying to understand why I attract so many people with personality disorders into my life. Strip/Becoming is the working title. It is looking at the character, Marcy, losing her identity – although not in the way I lost mine. This entire group of stories is connected. Marcy first appears in 56 Seconds and she was the character I most wanted to give a back story. I might go back and give Honey one too, or the hipster jerking off in the toilet.

The final element in what I write, is I speak to a lot of different people and make it a point to listen. I can’t experience first hand what a lot of my characters do and I really wouldn’t want to. But with some of the tamer things, I listen to people into that stuff. It gives my writing that added touch of realism. It also gives me keywords to google. And I read a lot. Lately, I’ve been looking more intensely at personality disorders and listening to people who have them.

The name Queen of Filth stems from my ex-boyfriend. He gave it to me. I refuse to use a name other than a variant of my own but there was already a Dani Brown out there, so I needed something to stand out from the others with the same or similar names. I don’t think he understood the Cradle of Filth connection. I’ve since bought a Cradle of Filth teeshirt, despite only ever having heard one or two of their albums, for public events.

What’s your favorite out of all your work?

My favourite out of all of my work. My favourite is usually what I’m working on at the time. All time favourites are Seth, Stef and Tucker and 56 Seconds. I’ve already covered Seth in this interview.Stef and Tucker haven’t been published yet. It is a little series of novelettes. I think I have four completed so far. It follows a band who get up to some very bizarre things on tour. Going to set the record straight on somethings about it now. My now ex-boyfriend had changed an interview I had given to state he was a character in the stories. He was not. As far as I’m concerned, it isn’t anyone’s damn business if I’m in a relationship or not, but he liked to be included in everything and I did my best to accommodate this. Seldom did he form a basis for a character. Where he has, it will be included in the author notes. Off the top of my head, I think Jerusalem in The Previous Plastic Surgeon. The idea itself did come from him listening to a particular band and me messing around with their lyrics, a habit I’ve had since early childhood. How I picture Stef and Tucker and supporting characters in my head: is the band, Seth as the Road Demon (a supernatural version of Seth at least) and a pop singer as portrayed by The Daily Mail. I love writing the Stef and Tucker stories. I love erotic bizarro. It is simply fun. I hope when these stories start to get published, readers enjoy them as much as I do. The future with Stef and Tucker will see me actively trying to turn on readers with the bizarre sexual situations. It won’t all be jerking off into socks and having relations with zombies.

56 Seconds. Love/lust lost in 56 seconds of glory on the sheets. I don’t know if there are words to express how much fun I had writing 56 Seconds and developing the characters. I only finished it a few days ago. It was me trying to understand the behaviours of men who send dick pics and what is their thinking behind it. I haven’t written like that in years. Out of the entire Tainted Love/Push the Button stories, it is probably one of the more fun ones, at least as a writer. The one I’m on now, Strip/Becoming is very extreme and very violent, more so than anything I’ve written before.

Excluded here is Chester and Lester. That is a free series I have running on my website https://danibrownqueenoffilth.weebly.com/chester-and-lester.html.

They’ve taken a bit of a serious turn lately. I had a few hiccups in recovery towards the end of 2017 and the beginning of this year and it was coming out in those stories. I’m in a better place mentally now. I’m also a lot stronger and won’t be making the same mistakes. I’ve started writing a new one. A fun one again. They’ll still include the warnings with them though. Although it turned out not to be my writing that seemed to give people permission to approach me and ask me all manner of ridiculous questions taking precious time away from me, I still have some anxiety in that regard and my over the top Placebo fan girling can only go so far towards relieving it. Next time I’m asked about favourite pieces, Chester and Lester will probably make the list.

Your latest, Ketamine Addicted Pandas, is a book about pandas who run wild in the world after years of captivity, what inspired it?

Ketamine Addicted Pandas. That piece was so much fun to write at a time in my life where I really needed something fun, something that was my idea of fun. Writing is fun. It is my passion in life. For years, I was having other people’s ideas of fun thrust upon me and didn’t get to have any fun. I retreated into this story. Writing. That is fun for me. I also do other things and have since rediscovered random trips with no overnight accommodation and parties (ketamine free and destruction free). I bring my notebooks with me though. I bring my notebooks or index cards everywhere.

The idea itself. An email from the WWF saying pandas have moved off the endangered list. Black metal band Immortal gracing my facebook newsfeed. And 30 years of black metal rumours. I know some of them like their electronic music so I added in the dance music. The concept itself is so ridiculous and over the top. Writing with those extremes was fun. I didn’t give myself any limits. And didn’t care about who is going to find it offensive. It was also me writing about no one in particular. Like I used to do.

Why Ketamine?

Ketamine was an easy choice. When being used outside of its prescribed form, people use it as a party drug. The pandas like to party as they bring about death and destruction. It goes well with their dance music. Zoos would keep a supply of it handy as it is used as an animal tranquiliser. I don’t know whether it would be strong enough to knock out a panda. As a drug, it is something I’ve never taken. No one I know would give me details of taking it. I guess that’ll teach me not to make fun of people for taking horse tranquilisers (seriously guys, have you tried acid!?!). The word itself, ketamine, it has a nice ring to it. As no one would tell me about taking it, I did have to look up information on it. Turns out it isn’t addictive. But given that the pandas are probably too large for it to be effective, I didn’t let that bother me. They also eat baboon brains instead of bamboo in my story. Reality was the last thing I was concerned with when writing it. I don’t know what reality is like for someone high on ket though. No one will tell me.

The pandas are rather fond of both drugs and chaotic destruction; tell us a little bit about why?

I pushed the pandas to the extremes. That was purely down to the black metal thing. Extreme music. Extreme pandas.Drug use? Most people who take drugs do so recreationally and don’t become junkies, but let’s make them junkies. Who cares about reality? Public service announcements that pot is the devil and one joint will turn you into a drug addict. Yeah, I’m going to use that. Not all people who enjoy dance music take drugs, or party drugs, but who cares? They’re stereotyped as such. This book is pure escapism into the reality public service announcements like to make but with pandas instead of people.

The destruction is from the black metal elements of the story. I find it fascinating these young people making music, some of it very beautiful, would torch historic churches in the 90s. It is a very odd thing to do. But these guys were strange enough and extreme enough to kill each other. There’s so many rumours about black metal, that it would be difficult to work out what is true and what isn’t. I’m almost certain some of the people involved wouldn’t know the difference. I took the most extreme elements and went over the top with them. Don’t torch one church. Torch many. And there’s plenty of other religions in the world. Destroy their buildings and rape their clergy as well. Don’t discriminate.

Why do they choose to pick on Nazis and metalheads?

The Nazis. Down to black metal rumours. Who is a Nazi? Who used Nazi imagery, or were they sourcing it from the same places the Nazis themselves sourced imagery from? There’s neo-nazis in the world. The pandas hunt them down for the uniforms. Real Nazis burning in Hell take offense. So they bust out of Hell in pursuit of the pandas to get their uniforms back.

Metalheads? Down to black metal, again. There is no metal beyond black metal. It is taking something small and blowing it out of proportion. Maybe some of the black metallers don’t like other types of metal? So they’ll track down other bands and kill them and steal their instruments and stages. At least actual black metallers have mellowed out.

Black metal and Nazism are two very extreme things. Being around people, not Nazis or black metallers, but with extreme view points, I started to write with only the extreme and over the top in mind. I tried to make it more extreme. More intense. More over the top. Which is how I feel when I’m around very extreme people. Something went well? Well, lets do it again, only this time, lets do it better. That never-satisfied feeling of the easily bored. I don’t know what it is like to be bored or empty. I don’t have time for boredom. I tried to capture what it might be like in the story though.

Despite some of the strong themes of violence and fecal destruction there are some themes hidden within the plot that are almost esoteric, what made you add them?

I added them with the black metal rumours and the little bit of information I know about Himmler. Apart from ketamine, I didn’t look up anything to write this story. I just wrote it. Over the years, I’ve read about Satanism, which is a common theme in black metal. Paganism, another common theme in black metal. I didn’t do so hot in history class at high school, but I did find some of the occult elements of Nazism to be interesting. Somewhere along the lines, with black metallers cursing each other and making shit up about each other, Satanism, Paganism and Nazi occult things with a little touch of Aleister Crowley, half-remembered bits of information combined in my head and fell out on the page.

We reach the end of the book with a sense that there could be other books and certainly more misadventures for the colony of bears, what should be expect?

There will be a second one. Once I finish the Tainted Love/Push the Button group of stories, I will write the second one before starting another group of stories. Ketamine Addicted Pandas is too fun to not write. I love the extreme over the top characters. I want to keep them as that, characters. I don’t want extreme people in my life. Weird, yes. Passionate, yes. Extreme, no, I want to save that for the page.

As I was writing this story, a lot of the people with extreme points of view in my life, left and found someone new to pick on. I was very open about what I was writing when writing this, minus to potential Tindr dates as my writing has gotten me in trouble in that regard in the past. Writing something so over the top and something that was bringing me obvious joy, the leeches left. They realized they couldn’t change me. My happiness was not reliant upon them and they couldn’t make me as miserable as them and bring me down to their level. Ketamine Addicted Pandas served as a shield for me.

The second one will see the pandas pick on the KKK in the Bible Belt. They have demonic help, so they can transport there easily enough. I do have some notes for it. I would like to make them more extreme. More over the top. More insane. And bigger junkies. They need to exhaust the world’s supply of ketamine and Hell’s supply of ketamine.

How would you classify your books as a whole? Bizarro? Gonzo? A bit more their own thing?

I don’t know how to classify my books. Although I can write to a brief when required, I typically write what I want, when I want. More so now. Each story brings in elements of different genres. There will be a lot more experimental things from me. Once I have a new computer, I will be picking up my main experimental piece, The Panda Says No!, again. Not to be confused with Ketamine Addicted Pandas.

Some books, like Welcome to New Edge Hill, easily fit into the horror category. Others, like Reptile, are more bizarro. I self-published Broccoli and had the hardest time picking categories for it. Seth I class as porn-lit. Night of the Penguins is a bit of a showcase over what I can do. Some of my stories even have sensual erotic elements in them.

What else can we expect to find coming from you in the near future?

Near future, 56 Seconds. I have a publisher for that already. As of writing this, it hasn’t been announced so I won’t say anything more.

I did a Dual Depravity with David Owain Hughes, which’ll be out from JEA, possibly within the next few days. It has my stories The Previous Plastic Surgeon and God’s Fleshlight as well as two from David.

Splat 3. The final one. I have three stories in there.

I haven’t secured a publisher for Sparky the Spunky Robot yet. I sent it into a slush pile months ago and now need to track it down. If it was a rejection, I’ll be sending it onto another slush pile rather than using one of my usual publishers or self-publishing. It is a good story, but it may take some time before it gets an acceptance somewhere.

There’s probably more. I write things and then send them out and forget until I either hear back or go over my submissions folder.

Set at a facility which is both a school for the hearing impaired and a haunted attraction, Bloodstone Institute tells us the story of Dominoe, a college graduate set on starting her career and caught up in a mystery when she begins at the school.What inspired you to write Bloodstone Institute?

One of the best memories I had as a teenager was volunteering at a local haunted house every October. We went as far as helping out during the summer. Like painting and building, etc. Most of all it was our hangout. Some people went to arcades or skating halls. We went to a haunted house just to have fun and catch up with one another. I wanted to write something as a dedication to the best time of my life. After all the creepy stories people told one another, and my own experiences there, it was just a great fit for a creepy tale.

You say that this book is based on true events, how so? Is Dominoe a real person or a character experiencing the life events of another? Tell us a bit about the inspiration for Dominoe.

Me and the other volunteers would tell of our experiences at the haunted house. I was told it was really haunted when I first started working there. I laughed and thought it was a new person prank. Until I found out for myself. Then the stories came out. They were too creepy to be hidden, so I turned them into one big story with my own little twist. These were people I trusted with my life. I was certain they were not full of it. Especially seeing and hearing what I witnessed inside that building. Dominoe is not a real person to this story. She wasn't really my inspiration though, even though the real person I know is a blonde as well. I wanted the main character to have a unique name. So I went with Dominoe from an old James Bond movie. However the name was spelled without the E at the end. I thought it had an E. Either way I loved the sound of the name. It was different and beautiful. Picking names for characters are one of the hardest tasks I face when writing. This one though is one of those where I feel I picked a good name for the character and story.

You’ve worked at a real haunted house yourself in the past, what was that like? How does it affect your writing?

It was the best time of my life. I love Halloween and horror. To scare someone was easy and so much fun to me. As for affecting me? It doesn't really affect me much. This story is the only time it affected me. I had to think and remember all those stories and details from the place. I tried to cram as much of the dedicated names as possible. There are things I probably could have done different. But I love what I wrote and it’s always a learning path in writing. I have considered possibly writing a sequel. Being that I feel there is more I can tell. And more dedications that I have left out.

Murder Creek is a more direct and intimate tale, featuring small town life and how it affects those who live it, tell us a bit about how you thought of this book.

My mom was dying of cancer at the time. I had always wanted to be a filmmaker. That idea was dead where it stands. I wrote ideas and scripts. Whenever I was close to filming, something would happen and there were never enough people to cast. I just gave up. I began reading more and out of the blue thought of this twisted plot ending. That's when I decided to try book writing. I used this ending twist as a starter for my first novella. I was used to horror ideas, but never thrillers. It was a challenge at first, but I was up for trying it out.

Does Murder Creek have any of the true life basis that Bloodstone Institute had? What makes it and your process for writing it different?

Everything in Murder Creek is fiction. I did not base anything on real life events. A lot of the story is anger and mystery. Anger being a key role in some parts. My mom died before I finished the book. I was angry at God and just depressed. I took all that anger and put it into writing. I did a few edits of my story, but I never changed the anger or death scenes. It was a bad time in my life that I try to forget. But that bad time made the story and is a good way to express to others what I was feeling and how it affected me. It was different going from scripts to books, but a lot easier to get the word out. The only thing different in this process was the genre. There are still monsters in there. The only difference is the monsters are us humans. There is still blood, anger and mystery. It’s just done in different times, different meanings, and different emotions inside of me.

You have a fondness for thriller and mystery themes in your books; do all of your pieces have these elements? Do you think we can expect them to stay with you throughout your career?

I would say so for the most part. It is my favorite thing to write, read, and watch. I do want to try different things here and there. My biggest challenge is wanting to do something set in the past like in the era of Game of Thrones. And one day maybe write my story of going through my mom battling cancer.

​

What are some other projects you’ve got going or that we might see coming out in the near future?

I am currently working on a book titled Trick or Shriek. It is going to be full of short horror stories that all take place on Halloween night in the fictional town of McKenzie Falls. It is basic legends and stories we were told as a kid and now. Like the razor blade in candy, the body mistaken for a prop, etc. I have other things either being worked on or that needs to be edited as well. I work a full time job, so I take the chance to write whenever I can. My goal is always to have at least one new book out a year.

​ Hey guys, I've been meaning to update you all on the works I have going, so here we are :) Below you'll find a list of titles and a little info on each. Most are going to need a pretty good amount of effort to be completed but a few of these are as simple as completing a few points or polishing them to have them ready to get out the door. I hope you'll find them as interesting as I do and that you'll be just as invested in seeing them out.

Other Dangers: This is How the World Ends, Further Down the Spiral, and This Coming Darkness:

If you haven't already gotten to read Slipped Through you're going to want to get that done here in the next few months. This is How the World Ends is book two and you absolutely have to read each book in order for this series to make sense. Taking up where Henry left off ;) we enter the book itself and the story of how the world in which he's crash landed came to be what it is. We'll get to know our mysterious female lead of Slipped Through better and delve into some of her quirks with this one, also learning more about some of her closer compatriots and the dark figure who seems to haunt her. Further Down the Spiral and This Coming Darkness are books three and four, Spiral being relatively easy to get out around the same time as Darkness still having to be written. In Spiral we see what's going on with Henry and his companion while slipping back into the book for more information about how some of our stronger leads found themselves antiheroes in a world gone on from where our own stands. Henry has some tough choices and events to tackle in the coming books, getting home among them. I really hope you'll like seeing where things are going. With Darkness I plan to build things toward their peak, both with Henry's current situation and with the events in the book, where we should be hitting the final conflict and arriving at its conclusion. That is not to say that book four will be our last book per se, that remains to be seen.

Vast Ocean/Vast Sea:

If you've read FearoticaI'm sure you're familiar with my story"Vast Oceans" in which we find ourselves on an alien planet occupied by little more than one vast ocean and an island where the protagonist finds herself isolated after crash landing . Except she isn't really alone and things are far more complicated than she thought. The story ends shortly after she learns a bit about the only other living being with sentience, the book will go on from there and we'll see what else there is to their relationship and the world itself. I sort of consider this one my Lovecraftian gothic in space.

Night is Falling:

This one is also sci-fi horror,only a bit more terrestrial. Bobby is a man who stands out even among his people, being alone in most things and more perceptive than many, he isn't surprised to find himself the only one that sees what's happening to the people around him. An uncertain witness who finds himself doubted by the very people he hopes to save he can only watch and document it all hoping that it will come to some better end.

Hollow Black Corners of the Soul:

This is book four of the Shades of Midnight series. Don't worry fans, there is more to tell both through this book and beyond. Here we learn more about Mateo's own past, how he came to be in both Marie and Becca's lives, and what made him the monster he appears to be in Cool Green Waters. We also learn a bit more about Delamorte and his intentions for Katja and Raven, who we left on a bit of a cliffhanger in CGW. I've got a pretty big surprise or two in store with this series and its just a matter of time before I figure out how I want to tackle them.

Jodie:

I've been talking about this one on and off for a bit now. It started life as a completed short story I wrote in high school and has involved some of my most involved planning to make into a full novel. Hence the delays...bleh. Jodie is about a girl who went through some very traumatic events as a child and never quite grew up as a result. Now a teenager and very fond of her collection of dolls, her only friends in the world, she's about to see the results of those traumatic events coming to a head. Jodie isn't like anyone else, and that's never going to be more apparent than it will be when Ben decides he's done dealing with her. Also the story of a town, of dark secrets, the power of gossip, and the supernatural it has quite a bit going on for a book set in 70s rural Ohio. Killer dolls, telekinesis, first love, and the affects of trauma feature pretty strongly here.

Her Shadow Within:

This one's sort of a personal what if story and one that's meant to heal, hopefully with one of my own personal traumas, and those of readers who might have similar experiences. I do have to say it may be a book I have to find another publisher for or one that I do on my own because it has the most in common with the fantasy genre of all the possible places it could've fallen and JEA focused toward horror. If you know a good fantasy centered press I'm all ears!

Now for the plot. David is a little boy when his mom suddenly goes catatonic after the loss of his baby sister, lost and alone amid the loss of his mother and the grief of his father, he doesn't quite know how to connect with anyone and is afraid to trust bonding with his father out of fear he'll leave him too. Highly aware of everything and inexorably detached at once, he alone notices it when his mother wakens from her endless sleep and darts out into the night. Desperate to connect with her he follows her not knowing how he'll reach her, instead following her through some bushes and slipping into another world where nothing seems right and David must keep up with a mother who seems to have forgotten he was ever born.

Well, those are the books I know I have going and hope to complete withing the next couple years. Ideally, I'll be able to get a couple of them out in the next six months or so. Feel free to write me about these or any of my other titles currently on the market!